Wrexham Fostering Service (a department of Wrexham County Borough Council).
This brief was began life prior to beginning the final year at University, and was worked on from late August 2008 though to May 2009.
The Research Process
This brief was approached like a re-brand. The clients, the Fostering Service are very passionate about their jobs, and had always historically devised their own promotional work. I have family contacts that work there, and they initially asked for a design for a billboard site in Wrexham. I said I was keen to look at this, and set about initial research.
I had spent a lot of time throughout the summer reading Wally Olins’ books on branding (On Brand and The Brand Handbook) and decided that this area ought to be researched in depth. I started desk research, and once appointed a point of contact, began having regular meetings at their offices.
Around half my workbook is about research. The very brief summary of this found that:
• The Council run (public sector) Fostering Service has ‘competition’ from the private sector
• The Local Authority is legally responsible for the basic welfare of ALL 0-16 year olds, whether in local authority or private care, or with their natural parents or guardians.
• The Council’s Fostering service didn’t have any fixed identity or a fixed name.
• People in the area did not know the difference between them and the higher profile corporate competition (i.e. Fostering Solutions)
• All communications are required to be bilingual, which usually makes typographic communications overly wordy and cluttered.
• All previous communications and advertising examples were collected.
• Research from fostering services all over the UK and worldwide was collected to look at the general feel.
• Other visual research was collected, and a new direction was sought, for a fresh approach.
• I looked at the Council’s brand handbook, and discovered that it was allowable to move away from they chosen colours and type choices for any department that competes with the private sector, so found out what could and could not be done visually.
• I also found out they really needed to differentiate themselves from the corporate fostering agencies, as their competition raises the council's budget for fostering by up £5m per annum. They needed to get more foster parents working with them directly.
At this stage I decided to go with a pictorial symbol, which could communicate the essence of the Fostering Service. I brought in and briefed illustrator Alex Willmore, and we collaborated on the visual approach from this point.
I had many further meetings with the Fostering Service to find out as much about them, what they do, what differentiates them from the private sector agencies, and to find out what makes them unique. The unique point was that they do not do what they do for profit, and the employees could earn a lot more money working for the corporate sector. They care passionately about what they do, and felt strongly that the private sector competition exploited vulnerable children and young people for profit.
Visual Development
Having worked out what they were about, I discussed the ideas with the Fostering service. This involved being very straight with them, whilst remaining sympathetic to their needs. I told them I thought they were most likely too close to know how other people saw them, and told them that the general public often know nothing that goes on within the council’s buildings.
Having decided to use minimal quantities of type, and base the communication on bright colours and a pictorial symbol to represent the essence of the Fostering service, many approaches were tried. I felt strongly that they needed to use an abstract image or Anthropomorphism, so they anyone of any gender or race could imagine themselves as that character. I had written down many ideas that suggest protection, such as ‘take a child under your wing’, and Alex tried a mis-match of different animals. We also tried some more obvious approaches, which we could then eliminate. I also tried looking at a lot of reductive pictogram type symbols (anything with eyes and a smile looks human).
Symbols:
Various symbolic images were now tried, e.g. an umbrella, Birds (take a child under your wing), Penguins (who protect each others eggs to help the colony survive), big hands, Kangaroos (with a pouch), Characters based around Jigsaws (with mis-matched colours). Many of these symbols might have worked, but many were just too twee and cute. We needed something bold, but a bit more universal, and started developing the umbrella idea. I spent a lot of time developing out a pictogram with a parent, 2 kids under an umbrella sheltering from rain, whilst Alex Wilmore drew an illustration based around the same theme. We presented the ideas to the council, and they were happy with the concept, and thought it worked best as an illustration.
Further development:
From here, I worked on typographical styles, and integrated the pictogram umbrella into a logotype. What followed were many attempts at settling on a colour palette and layout (see workbook). Our characters were at this point abstract, neutral-gender people based on a thumb. The council liked these, and had approved it, and 2 versions were presented with the colour palette, one with the characters shown in a full-body ‘long shot’ and one where they were shown in close-up. The council were very happy for 2 days, before they came back with a problem. It was felt that the characters looked like Muslims, and fostering is anathema to their religious belief system. This could cause a lot of problems, especially as social workers are often vilified in the media.
Once the idea was in place, Alex redrew the characters as real human beings, but still mixed the skin tones and hair colours to suggest a happy mix of people. We now finally had the elements and approval to proceed (after much ‘can you make the phone number bigger type stuff).
I took the development of the job from this stage, and I requested a full body line drawing of the characters and set about delivering the work. The original plan was to submit a Billboard and A2 and an A4 poster design. The Council had been fairly difficult to deal with, and didn’t really know what they wanted. This is why I had to do so much research, as they didn’t suggest anything that was of any use. They also didn’t really know too much about the production process, as most of the formats were then handled by external media buyers and print companies.
I spent a few weeks trying to second-guess them and emailing and calling them, before suggesting they pass on the external partners contact details. These were the repro graphics department at the council (surly and unhelpful), and the media buyer, Hugh at Walker Media (efficient and very helpful).
Reflections on production.
Hugh Walker was very good, supplied me all the tech specs for the planned jobs, plus many other formats, which hadn’t been agreed. The billboard design was already done, but needed to be make to scale, which was 20% of full size with bleed. Hugh had become my point of contact, and became the guy who briefed me on formats. I had never worked on large-scale outdoor prints before, but the principles are the same.
I worked a lot with Dave Kelly, and produced all the artwork in the hub at the art school. Many of the bitmap parts were replaced with vectors for better reproduction, but the line drawing and some of the colours on the characters were kept as bit-map for the look and feel. I discovered that there was no real mystery to the print process on a technical level, but everything did need to be tested, printed, tweaked and reprinted. I found that by printing the big work small, it was good to balance the compositions, and then looked right at full size.
It was a fairly long winded process, as Hugh kept asking for more formats, such as super-rears (bus rears), Vinyl Banners, a leaflet front page, and every time a new format was done, I reworked the layout to fit the format, and to give the idea a slightly different angle, avoiding too much repetition. For the posters, I decided to devise a way to include a bit of type, as I thought they might request that sort of thing in the near future. I picked some other devices, and complementary colours that would fit, which could further be associated with the brand.
The production all happened fairly quickly; there is a national fostering fortnight, which began on the 11th May. All the formats were delivered with time for production, and the billboards and bus rears went live around the start of fostering fortnight. The artwork, which went through Walker Media, all looked good, and went up exactly as planned, un-doctored. There were always compromises throughout the design process, make the logo bigger, make the phone bigger (make everything bigger) and I obliged them, and they were happy.
The council’s own repro-graphics team handled the posters, and unfortunately they changed it a bit, altering the Council’s logo to the chosen pantone. This was a little annoying, as my design had been already been approved and cleared!
Summary
This project taught me many things. The research, professional practice and print-production elements amounted to a lot of work, and this project gave me the confidence to undertake other projects of a similar nature. I think public sector or ‘worthy-cause’ work is always going to be available, and whilst it isn’t glamorous, it can reach a large audience, and is available outside of London and other major cities.
If I was going to do things differently in future, I would maybe try and work out exactly who I need to speak to earlier on in the process about each role (e.g. media buyers etc), and I would also be a bit more wary of the in-house repro- graphics people (or get to know them and gain their trust!). I think we got the idea right in the end, but it took a lot of trial and error to get there. It would be good to be able to get there quicker in future.
The only other thing which I found frustrating, is the way the fostering service handle the identity. I realise it theirs, and I can't control everything, but a there are a few examples of how they fail to make the most of the new branding. They used our new design for the front cover of their leaflet, but kept their old campaign stuff (different, ugly colours and type) inside. They also still use a collection of various old campaign ideas at their promotional events, many of which even us a different name for the service. This does not really help clarify the difference between the Fostering service and the private sector, it just confuses people.
I could not control every aspect as a student, but I think a campaign like this would work much better in future if the brand identity could be better managed and adhered to. I think the media buyers were good to work with in the production stages, and all the formats they handled looked as intended.
